Ainon Capel y Bedyddwyr/ Ainon Welsh Baptist Chapel

This is a Welsh Baptist chapel, constructed in 1899. The chapel’s front facade is of snecked rockfaced stone with ashlar dressings, while the sides are rendered. It has a Welsh slate roof. The three-bay frontage features a lightly defined pediment containing a small, glazed gable window with a heavily moulded surround. An inscription panel reads “Ainon Capel y Bedyddwyr AD 1899”. Gallery level windows are round-headed with margin glazing and decorative capitals, keystones and plinths. The central ground floor doorway has an entablature, piers with deep plinths, and voussoirs over a round arched door surround with circular motifs in the overlight. Double plank doors are fitted. Flanking the doorway are square-headed sash windows with decorative tooling to the channelled voussoirs, surrounds, staggered quoins and plinth. Inscription plaques above the entablature record details of donors, the pastor, and Jonathan Jones, who is described as the ‘sculptor and builder of Treorchy’. The side frontage has four bays with round-headed windows with horned sashes in a moulded render surround at gallery level and square-headed sash windows at ground floor. A single-story lean-to wing at the rear extends to the left, creating a separate entrance with a stone inscription reading ‘Ysgoldy 1893’. The front has a shallow courtyard, enclosed by a rockfaced stone and ashlar boundary wall with piers topped by pyramidal capstones, iron railings and decorative gates.

Inside, there are raked galleries on three sides, supported by fluted cast iron columns with foliage capitals. The gallery fronts have shallow boarded panels edged by deep mouldings. The ceiling is panelled with three plaster roses, and the glazing margins incorporate some coloured glass. Other interior features include boarded dados, four-panelled doors, scribed walls, a pulpit with flanking steps used in baptism services, and a round arched plaster reredos.